


Christmas Day

by aadarshinah



Series: The Doctor and The Spinner [4]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Wolf Rose Tyler, Episode: s01e14 The Christmas Invasion, F/M, Time Lord Rose Tyler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 15:43:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16835614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aadarshinah/pseuds/aadarshinah
Summary: Someone always needs to be The Doctor.Follows "Daughter of Gallifrey".





	Christmas Day

**Author's Note:**

> Er... Remember what I said about my muse? Some of this was written in a burning haze on scraps of paper as I tried to fall asleep last night; some was written in the forsaken hours of the morning I for some reason keep waking up at; the rest was written and polished after I got back from work and had started to doubt my ability to string two words together. I'm not sure about parts of it, but...

She doesn't know if she's human or Time Lord or something in between, but she's all the Earth has right now. Somebody has to be The Doctor. Her head is pounding and her eyes are streaming and everything _hurts_ , but it might as well be her.

Rose washes her face. She changes her jumper. And then she goes to meet the Sycorax-

-who, her life being what it is, naturally grab her the moment she steps out of the TARDIS.

She flails, tries to remember where species from their part of the galaxy kept their delicate bits so she can get a knee in them, fails, and eventually screams, "Stop! Just stop! I only want to talk, yeah? Parlay. That's something even space-pirates have rules about, right, parlay?"

The Sycorax releases her. It's such a surprise she nearly topples over, only to be caught, surprisingly enough, by Harriet Jones. "Rose. Rose! I've got you. My Lord. Oh, my precious thing. The Doctor, is he with you?"

Rose blinks at the woman. She's not seen so many disparate possible timelines swirling around someone since she looked into the Time Vortex and it's not doing her head any favors at all. "That's a bit complicated," she hedges, trying to only look at her out the corner of her eye. "Did you win the election?"

"Landslide majority."

"Good for you, Harriet Jones. Now," she finds her feet, "which one of you speaks for the Sycorax?"

The one with the most elaborate helmet steps forward. "I speak for the Sycorax. You, yellow girl, you speak for this planet?"

Rose goes to meet him, only to be yanked back by a death grip on her arm. She's going to have quite the collection of cuts and scrapes tomorrow, presuming they get that far. She'd like to get that far. She'd like to figure out what she is before she dies.

"They'll kill you," Harriet hisses, eyes wide with fear. She's putting on a good show of it, but she's utterly terrified - not for herself, but for Rose and all the people on the planet below.

"Yeah, well, somebody's got to do it. Might as well be the person who doesn't need dodgy translation software." She gently pries the Prime Minister's fingers loose.

She's never been the best at this part, never been good at making people understand they were making a terrible mistake, but she's watched The Doctor try to help people who didn't want to be helped since before he was the Doctor through eyes human and Time Lord.

They had been such lonely children, not understanding why it was such a crime to ask _why_ , but they had had each other until she'd been locked away for a crime she hadn't yet committed. They'd both been shunned, disowned, persecuted, then forced to fight a war everyone had lost, but The Doctor had never stopped trying to help. She'd forgotten how to do that that once, but not anymore. She can try, whether she is Rose Tyler of the Powell Estate or the last Daughter of Gallifrey or something new and in between.

"Leader of the Sycorax," she tries once she's finally free. "This is a fully established level five planet. Did you honestly think you could try to enslave half the population and nobody would notice? This world is protected, defended, by forces you cannot even begin to understand. Please, for your own sake, leave this world while you still can."

The Sycorax leader laughs. It's a rough, grating sound that sends sharp bursts of pain deep into her skull. "Do you mean to frighten us?We are the Sycorax. We stride the darkness. Next to us, you are but a wailing child. If you are the best your planet can offer as a champion, then your world will be gutted and your people enslaved."

Rose huffs at the audacity of jumped-up gangsters and straightens to her full height, ignoring the dark spots in her vision. She may not look like much, but, "I am The Spinner, the Thread-Mother, the Golden Rose of Arcadia, and you _will_ listen to me: This world is protected by The Time Lords in the name of Gallifrey-That-Was-Lost, and-" She glances up at the Sycorax in the galleries and back at the fancy helmed leader not even pretending to look at her anymore. "-and you're not even paying attention. Hundred trillion species across time and space and not one of them is willing to listen to a girl from the estates."

"Oh, I don't know," a man says - and oh, she _knows_ that voice. She might not know if she's human or Time Lord or something altogether new, but she always knows that voice, even when its edges have been worn estuary smooth. "I thought you were doing a good job of making yourself heard."

Rose spins around and finds _him_ leaning against the TARDIS as casual as you please, still in Howard's pinstriped pajamas. She tries not to beam at him and fails. Earth may be facing an invasion and her head may be pounding in four-four time, but she's never been happier. "There you are. You certainly took your time."

"You had it well in hand."

"But I'm not The Doctor. Ah, ah-" she says, taking a precautionary step back as he pushes away from the ship, "you still have an hour and thirteen minutes left in your regeneration cycle. You don't want to blow a hole in space-time the size of Cleveland, do you?"

"Cleveland?"

She shrugs. "I figure we're down from Liechtenstein by now."

"Liechten-? No. Never mind. Forget I asked. We have more important things to discuss." He pauses with a level of theatrics that has only increased since they were children. He's ridiculous and she loves him all the more for it. "How do I look?"

"Sort of brownish," she tells him because she knows it will irritate him. Then, because she can't help herself, "I like the hair though."

"Good hair?"

"Sexy hair."

"Well, that's a relief," he says with a wink that shouldn't have her blushing, not after all these years, and turns to face the Sycorax leader with a smile on his face.

* * *

When it's all over and everyone else is staring up at the sky watching the Sycorax fly away, she's standing next to The Doctor and counting down the seconds in her head.

"Not long now," he tells her.

"No, not long at all."

"I missed you."

"I missed you too."

"What happened to you?" he asks, and Rose - The Spinner, the Thread-Mother, once Arkytior of Arcadia and maybe again - watches as he stuffs his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels so as not to give in to the temptation to reach out and touch at last. "I waited for you after graduation. I waited so long... And now here you are. Rose Tyler." He licks his lips and doesn't look at her when he asks, "Was she real? Was any of her ever really real?"

"I think so? I ran. I ran so far away I forgot who I was, but she was still me. The parts of me I could be while being human. Is that-," The Spinner swallows, eyes falling to the ground. "Is that okay? You wanted her. You _died_ for her, not a stupid little girl who couldn't even stand up to her own parents, so she ran away instead."

"I ran away too."

"But you fought. You tried to save them. I couldn't, so I left them to die." All of them. Her parents, Gallifrey, the stuffed shirts on the Council, the children still being Loomed, _him_ \- she left all of them to die, knowing the cost, simply because she couldn't stand the terrible, bloody, endless _futility_ of it all. Letting herself be erased from existence had seemed like a small price to pay compared to creating life only to watch it be slaughtered.

"I killed them."

"You saved them! Two point four seven billion children born only to die and you saved them-"

"By killing them!"

Rose reaches out, desperate to touch, to latch on, to make him understand and never let go, but catches herself before space-time can unravel. "Ninety-seven seconds," she whispers.

"You weren't there in the final days of the War." His words are quiet, filled with the air of a man stumbling upon revelation, but it feels like an accusation. "You never saw what was born. Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-have-been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres. You were right to run. You were the only one of us with any sense."

She shakes her head, hair flying in her face as she tries to make The Doctor _understand_. "Who do you think created the Nightmares? What do you think the Travesties _were_ before I smothered their souls in the Perversion Forge and smelt the ashes with paradox and despair?"

"I was there at the fall of Arcadia."

"I-" Rose Tyler, The Spinner, Arkytior, whoever she is - she finds herself snorting. "Listen to us. Right pair we make, a couple of old biddies nattering about whose hip is worse."

"But still a pair."

"You still want me?"

She lifts her head and catches sight of a smile that's followed The Doctor across an untold number of regenerations and incarnations. "Always." He pauses, counting. "Eighteen seconds."

The seconds tick down in her head, _fifteen, ten_ , _five, four, three_ , and she's moving, throwing himself into his arms, and she doesn't know if she lifts her head first or he's the one who leans down to her, but his lips are on hers and it doesn't matter that her head is still pounding or her whole body still hurts because they're finally together like they always should have been.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is roughly like an ending. There's more I *want* to write, but my muse is already starting to disagree with me, so we'll see what happens. Thank you again to all commenters so far.


End file.
